Fault Lines
by Yotsubadancesintherain5
Summary: It's buried under the guise of courage. Part 18 of the Yotsuba & Frisk series.


Yotsuba felt something kick at her side, and she was awoken from her half-formed dream about transparent vans and the rain. She rolled out of the way of the barrage of kicks, and stood up. Her feet got caught up in the bedding, but she managed to keep her balance.

Through the help of the moonlight she could see Frisk flailing, their small hands and feet hitting the floor.

Yotsuba did what any sensible child would do.

She fell down to the floor and tried to grab at Frisk's wrists, getting hit once or twice, and when she got a good grip she chanted, "Wake up, wake up, wake up."

With one last kick, Frisk broke out of the fitful sleep and they breathed heavily. They looked about, their head tilting up to see Yotsuba looking down at them. She had let go of their wrists.

They lifted themselves up from the floor and sat down. Taking a glance at their hands, they reached forward to hug Yotsuba. The grip was too tight and she tried to wriggle out of it.

When Frisk let go, Yotsuba asked quietly, "Nightmare?"

Frisk nodded.

Yotsuba rolled over to the other futon and began to lightly smack at it. When she felt that it was empty, she said, "Daddy's not here. Follow me."

In the TV room, Yotsuba closed the entrance and turned on the light. She padded over to her crayons and paper and didn't notice Frisk flinch at the TV.

Yotsuba called for Frisk to come over to the table, where the paper and crayons were strewn about. She pushed the paper to them when they sat down, and she said, "I have bad dreams, too, like camera ghosts and daddy eating my candy."

She drew the scene to empathize her point, with Mr. Koiwai drawn tilting up a bag of candy into his mouth. There were words with little arrows pointed at him saying "Bad", "Stinky" and "Thief".

Yotsuba shook the drawing a little as she showed it to them, glaring at the paper.

Frisk got to work on their drawing. There were long strokes of red on the paper for fire, marked as such by an arrow, and a circle with a frowning face. The circle had horns and a crown, as well as a yellow beard. The circle had a large block of purple surrounding it.

"Oh," Yotsuba said at the word in the box under the purple. "A fight? You had a fight with Asgore?"

There were multicolored hearts added besides crayon Asgore. Of course, even when you have a fight with someone you love, you don't stop loving them. Yotsuba nodded at the addition, and thought Frisk was very wise.

When the drawing was finished, Frisk pushed it aside. They started to draw on multiple sheets of paper, drawing Monsters that Yotsuba recognized. Some of the Monsters had their own paper, with blocks of backgrounds, while others were crammed together. All of them were adorned with frowning faces.

On the corner of one of the papers, Frisk wrote out a large word, colored blue.

"You forgive them?" Yotsuba asked. It must have been tough, being scolded so many times.

Frisk grabbed another clean sheet and used all of the crayons for it. They started with a box, and used the green to make branches that grew out of the box. The branches encompassed the entire paper, and Frisk drew yellow beams of light and bullets inside the free space. They roughly made the box smile, the tip of the crayon breaking with such force.

They wrote the word "evil", the lines faded due to the broken crayon.

It was quiet, and Yotsuba would have reached out to touch their shoulder if they hadn't taken one more piece of paper and drew the photograph in the family altar. Frisk let the crayon roll and clatter on the floor. They drew their knees up to their chest.

Yotsuba opened her mouth and closed it. She quietly walked to her box full of mementos and dug around. She went back to the table and held out a bag full of candy.

"Do you want some of my candy?"

When his work was done, Mr. Koiwai walked out of the office to notice that the light was on in the TV room. He found the two children asleep, an empty bag of candy next to them and a lot of drawings on the table.

He carried them back to the futon so that they would properly sleep. He would have them clean up the mess in the morning, before taking Frisk home.

**A/N: Originally posted on AO3 on February 23 2017**


End file.
